pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Richard Morris wrote:

> I've done this sort of stuff on the pfaf site. I've used programs like 
> wget (on linux) to download entire website. I've then run some perl 
> scripts over the downloaded files, these pickout the information I want 
> from the web pages and write it into a database/text file.

No copyright problems doing this?

> I've mainly used this to build link to other database, get synonyms and 
> common names of plants, and also stuff like the invasive status of 
> certain plants.

Would be nice to have a Linux or Win app to use to do this sort of thing;
fill in a form with strings to search for and file to write results to.

> It can be quite a tricky programing task as the html changes from site 
> to site, is often inconsistant and a pain to parse. One of the reasons 
> I'd like permaculture.info to be available in xml decause it would make 
> it easier for others to read in.

You have mentioned this several time before and it certainly does seem 
important
that this be done as part of the development of PIW. Lots of wikis utilize xml
standards, Mailman too, I think; what about Blogs? In keeping with current 
rave trendy
webthings people flock to in droves, what about setting up a cool Blog in 
permaculture.info.
Any possibility of this, Bear? and a wiki too? Ibiblio is big into blogging 
(see their homepage)
and I am wondering what software they are using; if it like the Blogger site, 
maybe ibiblio is running
some blogg app globally, which we could use. A blog would b a relaxing thing 
for our constituency
to fool around with, a perfect complement to the piw list.

LL
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
Market Farming Forum
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